Nightingale
by Nicniviean
Summary: This was inspired by the April Prompt for my fanfic writing group of Facebook. This is a total NonCanon AU telling of Mass Effect from about the begining of ME2 forward. If you can't handle NonCanon Renegade Shep, then this is not for you. This is going to be violent, painful, brutal and full of feels and dealing with real human nature. Probably not for the faint of heart.
1. Wrong

The mission went to complete utter fucking hell the moment Soraya T'Loak's combat boots hit the deck of the Cerberus station. Half her troops were dead, half the living were injured, half of the uninjured were hitting the point of extreme battle fatiuge. She needed to order a full retreat to get her people out of there before all of them were dead instead of just most of them. Soraya was more than certain she could finish the mission on her own from here. She was crouching behind a hip high crate with her second command at her side, both of them breathing hard and sweating. There were still at least a dozen enemy troops pinning them down, but in all actuality, Cerberus stood no chance.

"Bray, I'm going to say something you're not going to like all that much," She drawled as she leaned out of their low cover and lobbed a Stasis. She then shot three of her ensnared Cerberus operatives square in the head.

"Three in a row, huh? We're at that part of the plan already?" Bray grumbled miserably, ejecting the thermal clip from his assault rifle and slapping another one in it's place. Not missing a beat, the batarian leaned out and emptied the clip, dropping four men.

"I know you want to keep playing, Bray, but you heard my mother," Soraya replied, lobbing a lift grenade as hard as she could to make it hit the wall at the end of the corridor and ricochet to the sidehall the Cerberus operatives were staging their attacks from. A quick sweep of the IFF from her heavily modified Kuwashii visor told Soraya no one was left standing.

"When did you become the obedient child?" Bray questioned with a whole hearted laugh. He stood upright, and reached a hand down to pull the human woman up. She accepted his offer, and was hauled up right.

Shouldering her rifle, she pulled her pistol from it's holster on her thigh, Soraya looked Bray straight in his main eyes. "It's time to get those who can go off the fucking station, Bray." The words were said in the nearly monotonous tone her mother used when making clear that the line between friendly and commanding had been crossed. With a shake of his head, he handed her an extra grenade, and turned and jogged off, ordering a full retreat back to the ships to those that were able to hear him.

Soraya watched him for a moment before turning back to finish what she was sent to do. She felt a slight weight press further down on her shoulders as soon as Bray left her side. He didn't know she was hiding things from him.

Clearing three more levels, Soraya came to a slight opening where a man was crouching behind a balcony rail. She'd hacked the entire stations mechs to turn on their owners about three minutes after she pushed on by herself, and they had him pinned down. Skittering to a stop, Soraya practically jumped into the small amount of cover offered by the side of the doors. Heart hammering in her chest, she leaned into the corner, catching her breath with practiced and controlled ease.

"Miranda, this is Jacob," the dark skinned man yelled, presumably into a comm. "Someone hacked our security mechs and they have me pinned down not far from Shepard! They're trying to get to her!"

Soraya's ears perked to this. She must be getting close to her objective. Very close.

She checked her pistol and whirled out of her cover, aiming her biotic focus at Jacob as he was starting to register she was there and that she wasn't a friendly. With a thundering clap, the air that was once around her collapsed and crashed in on itself behind her as she biotically charged the officer at untrackable speeds. Pinning his back to the wall, she held her pistol right between his eyes.

"Tell me where the fucking abomination is, asshole," She sneered, her stare never wavering.

"I'll die before I tell you whe-"

Soraya pulled the trigger of her pistol mid-word, spraying the wall and her face with chunks of Jacob's face and brain. She wiped her face with the softer underside of her gauntlets as the headless body's knees buckled and it fell to the floor with a soggy tump. "As you wish," Soraya said softly, and continued to the Resurrection Labs.

Her mother had dropped quite the bomb on her during the mission briefing. She'd always known that she wasn't actually Aria's daughter, as an asari couldn't have given birth to her. She'd never actually asked where she'd come from, nor did she actually ever care. Aria had kept Soraya safe, healthy, educated, trained, and in Aria's own way; loved and cherished. However, being told during a mission briefing that you are the twin sister of the Hero of the Citadel was more than a little shocking. The shock value only went up when being informed that the famous Commander Shepard, the first human Spectre, had been killed two years ago and was in the process of being put back together in some freak science experiment. Bonus points: She was to make sure it didn't happen.

Aria believed full heartedly that what came out of that laboratory would be a walking, talking cerberus meat puppet if the project was a success. She wanted her gone, she wanted the space station holding the body gone, she wanted all information relating to the project gone. She wanted everything vaporized to the point of no return. Soraya was in just enough shock to not question her mother, and did as she was ordered.

Now, standing over the heavily scarred body of what she'd been told was once her twin, she felt a slight waver in her fortitude. She'd grown up feeling connected to something somewhere. Aria taught her that was Eternity she felt, and that made Soraya very special...

Shepard was connected to a ventilator, a feeding tube, a blood filter and what had to be a catheter. Machines monitored her heart rate, platelets, muscle density and brainwaves. Touching a discarded datapad, it's screen lit up with it's information. Soraya picked it up and scanned the notes, her gloved fingers hovering above her twin's name.

Megan Chase Shepard.

 _There was a small breeze carrying the smell of saltwater. Sun shone down through a canopy of green and gold. She was chasing something - no, someone - around the base of a giant hardwood tree. "No, Meggie! Give her back!" She cried, her little toddler voice full of outrage and anguish. Pale blonde hair kept running, her hands clutching a ragdoll._

Soraya nearly threw up in her mouth. She had no memory of her childhood before Aria. She shook her head vehemently, trying to shake what she seemed to have remembered off. Her mission was very simple; stop Shepard's Resurrection.

 _So why was it so hard?_

Soraya disconnected the blood filter first, then the heart monitor, the feeding tube, making her way through all the wires connected to her sister. Sister...the word felt foreign to her. Foreign and beautiful. She felt tears begin to well up in her eyes as she reached to remove the breathing tubes in her nose. For reasons Soraya couldn't explain, she pulled her hand back, snatched the glove and gauntlet off of her right arm, then removed the tubes from her nose. She'd barely gotten her hand six inches from Shepard's face when her eyes flew open and she grabbed Soraya's wrist.

"We thought they killed you..." she croaked, her eyes wide in shock, still clutching her wrist. "You still have the scar on your chin," Shepard whispered, her face getting whiter by the second.

Soraya's brows were pulled down in confusion that bordered on anger. "I-I have n-no idea what you're t-talking about," she stammered completely unnerved, using her gloved hand to try to pry the other woman's hand off her own wrist.

"The Reapers are coming, Morgan...You have," Shepard was struggling to speak at this time. Her organs were shutting down, her heart barely beating.

"My name is not Morgan! Let me fucking go!" Soraya cried, tugging harder at the hand holding her captive. She was genuinely starting to become afraid. Her skin was prickled in goosebumps, the hair on the back of her neck was standing straight up.

"No, you have to understand! They're coming!" Shepard hissed, trying to sit up. Megan Shepard's pupils dilated and Soraya heard her twin whisper, _"Embrace Eternity,"_.

 ** _Masses of meat in piles, a blue eyed turian with blue face paint, bodies on tall purple spikes, a giant red krogan, snow and giant bugs, wires and cogs fusing with flesh and bone, an asari caught in a giant stasis, screaming children, a purple quarian holding her bleeding arm, burning sky, red lasers in the sky, aliens being turned into abominations, planetary system, planet._**

Soraya came out of the vision and immediately bent over and emptied the contents of her stomach right next to Commander Shepard's hospital bed. She looked at the woman still holding her wrist and realized Shepard was gone.

Panic beset Soraya so fast she could barely stop herself from convulsing. She tried to re hook her twin to the machines, tears running down her cheeks.

"Noooooo... no, no, nononono! Come back, Megan! I'm sorry! No!" She shreiked, finally getting the neural and heart monitors reconnected. The cardial monitor started screaming it's high pitched song of death, and the panic inside her soul tripled.

"No! Megan, don't go! No!" Soraya screamed, her tears uncontrolled as she began pounding on Shepard's chest with the side of her first. "We need you, dammit! I don't know what to do!"

A blast from inside the station knocked Soraya to the floor. Swearing, she pulled herself to her feet using the Shepard's bedrails. As she regained her feet, her eyes caught a sparkle around her twins throat. Another ordinance blast nearly took her off her feet, but she managed to keep her footing and snatch the necklace off her sister's neck.

She bolted for the door and stopped to take a last regretful look at her sister's body before she hauled ass for her ship. "I'll try," was the whispered promise she made as she turned away for the last time.

She reached the Gipsy just as the last mechs carried their looted crates aboard. Bray was waiting for her at the hatch, his assault rifle at the ready.

"I didn't think you were coming, Sora. You turned off your omnitool right after I left your side," the batarian growled, his voice full of accusation.

Her eyes were still red and puffy, as her nose, but Soraya could easily brush that off with tear gas. She glared at Bray and pointed to the inside of her ship with the hand that was gloved. "No questions, just go," she growled back, her eyes full of a look that said 'don't fuck with me'.

Bray huffed in clear agitation, but did as he was ordered. He turned on his heel and made way for the cockpit, Soraya right behind him.

"Let's go home. I've had enough of this place," she barked as she punched the hatch button.

They were a safe distance away when the real explosions went off. Soraya watched with narrowed eyes from the observation windows in the cockpit as Lazarus Station began to implode. The silent violence was beautiful and dramatic, each momentary burst of oxygen igniting and exploding seemed to dance for a brief moment before the void of space extinguished it's life. _That's what I just did._ She thought with bitter animosity. There was a nasty taste in her mouth, something metallic and acidic. It was absolutely vile and repulsive.

"You wanna tell me what the hell just happened back there, or do I have to play Twenty Questions with you? Again." Bray rumbled from the pilot's seat, all four of his eyes trained on the instrument panel in front of him.

Soraya felt herself clench her jaw and fists in response to his question. _I just killed my twin sister on my adopted mother's command. She also may or may not be the only one that could have stopped the entire galaxy from being destroyed._

Her right hand stung like she cut it, and that's when she remembered Shepard's necklace. Unfolding her fist, she looked down at the winged star pendant that had apparently been her sister's. The urge to start screaming and never stop was almost overwhelming.

"I think I might have just completely fucked up, Bray," she said so seriously it sent a chill down the batarian's back. She fell into the co-pilot's seat and kicked her feet up, still looking at the bejeweled winged star.

"Hey, hey, hey! Get your fucking boots of my damned instrument panel, little girl!" Bray yelled at her, swatting her feet, but also grinning a little.

"It's my fucking ship, Asshat," she snapped back, shoving the necklace into a pocket on her hip before swinging her feet back to the deck.

"That your mother gave you," he shot right back, his tone mocking.

"Who happens to be your boss, so shut it and fly, Pretty Boy," she laughed, as she leaned back in her chair. Bray set their course for the mass effect relay, and Soraya starting contemplating what she was going to tell her mother...and what she was not.

"Oh, by the way...we captured the commanding officer of the station. Some real bossy bitch of a beauty queen named Miranda Something. Had to tranq her...She was still trying to tell me what to do when the sedatives started kicking in. I've got her in the brig. I also gave her enough sedatives to keep a krogan warlord on it's face for a week," Bray said with a very amused chuckle. He always did enjoy shooting people with tranquilizers. It seemed to be his happy place in life.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do with some Cerberus bitch?" Soraya bemoaned, throwing her head back angainst the seat's headrest. "We don't take prisoners, dammit!"

"Oh, I think she'll be very very useful in getting into some of the shit we just hijacked back there," Bray said with a chuckle. Clearly he knew something she didn't.

"Ugh, whatever. Just get me home. I need a fucking shower," She said gruffly, still grinning at her companion.

"Hear, hear to that. You really fucking stink," He muttered with a sideways glance at Soraya as he accelerated the Gipsy into the mass effect relay that was going to sling shot them back to Omega.


	2. Midnight City

Soraya was the last off the Gipsiy Danger when they docked in Omega. Home. Bray had gone ahead of her twenty minutes earlier to get his reports and intel to Aria and to get Miranda Something or Another to a holding cell to be forced back to consciousness with meds. Soraya didn't make it ten feet before she ran into someone she knew. Zaeed Masonni was on the station again, with another dumbass who pissed off someone who could afford to contract the old grizzled bastard.

She chatted with Zaeed for a few minutes, and his bounty tried to make a run for it. Both Zaeed and Soraya drew their pistols and shot the man in the back as he tried to run for the docks. Zaeed grumpily informed Soraya he was not splitting his contract price with her, but still clasped her hand in a parting handshake as they went their separate ways.

Soraya's varren, Acheron, was sitting right where she left him; next to the elcor bouncer at the foot of the stairs to her mother's throne room. Aria called it her base of operations, but Soraya called them as she saw them; Afterlife was a throne.

"C'mon! Aria's waiting for me!" A man in the 'good luck getting in' line yelled at the bouncer as she approached to get her hound. Soraya's eyelid jumped in instant irritation caused by the rather unremarkable man.

"Tell another lie, please," Soraya said with a sinister hiss, turning to look down in his eyes They were as murky and brown as sewage water. "My puppy here loves playing with liars." She purred while she snapped her gloved fingers once, barely an audible click, and Acheron stood up and heeled to her side.

"Nah, I ... Uh. I'm good on all that. I think I'll just stick with trying to bribe the bouncer," the nameless guy muttered as he backed away from her and put his hands up, shaking his head in dissent.

"Oh, that sounds perfectly appropriate for Omega!" she declared in mocking approval. "What do you think is enough to get by good ol' Mountain Back here?"

"A hundred credits?" He responded, his statement delivered more questioning than affirming.

"The dumbshit can come in for three hundred creds. If he's not good for it, put him in a vorcha costume and let him loose in front of Gavorn," she said while looking Mr Douche straight in the eye, her slightly cheerful tone leaving the statement open.

The bouncer slowly brought up his massive hand, making it a fist the size of a krogan's head. Soraya reached out and fist bumped the bouncer while still maintaining eye contact with the human, her gloved fist making a little 'bap'.

Defeated, the grimy man shuffled away towards the rapid transit station.

With Acheron by her side, she spun smartly on her heels and ascended the stairs to Afterlife, a soft menacing giggle bubbling past her lips.

* * *

"Are you sure it is dead, Soraya?" Aria demanded, laying heavy emphasis on the word 'it'. She hadn't looked up from the data pads of reports in her hand since Soraya had begun her debriefing. As always. Eyebrows cinched in determined concentration left Aria T'Loak with one hell of a resting bitch face.

Soraya shifted her weight, and exhaled in frustration. She had almost rolled her eyes, but caught herself. After all these years, after all the successful missions, Aria still questioned her every little move. The same questions over and over and over again, always asked differently to see if there was a different answer. Or a new one.

"You said Commander Shepard was still comatose when you pulled the plug...How close did those crazy fuckers actually get to making that thing a successful meat puppet?" Aria mused as she kept scrolling and scanning all the reports, the index finger of her free hand tapping her bottom lip tattoo absent mindedly as she absorbed all the information had to offer.

Soraya stared at her mother and felt her left eyebrow arch. "I wouldn't know, _Mom_. Do _you_ know what the word 'comatose' means?"

The moment the words left her mouth, Soraya ducked to avoid the datapad that came flying towards her. Her mother had a tendency to throw things at people who piss her off. So did Soraya herself.

"SHIT!" Bray yelled when the tablet connected with his neck, the poor bastard hadn't even seen it coming. He grabbed his neck with one hand, clutching at his newly attained injury, and glared at Soraya like he wanted to punch her. Which he'd probably do. Right in the face.

"Answer the question, little girl!" Aria barked, her fury with Soraya's flippant remarks clearly painted on her face. She stood up and closed the gap that was between them with a mini charge, suddenly looking her adopted daughter in the eye.

"She was nearly ready, Mother." Soraya replied, swallowing hard and praying to Athame she didn't get thrown across Afterlife. The tenancy to ignore the severity of her mother's mood had gotten her tossed more than once.

"That will complicate things," Aria said softly, her brows dropping over already narrowed eyes. "Liselle has been interrogating your captive, and she's been less than cooperative. However, as with all people, she has something precious to her that I can take away," she continued, turning her back on Soraya, her arms clasped behind her back as she walked back to her couch.

"You mean someone." Soraya said flatly, trying to cut her mother to the chase. She was tired, her amp was still buzzing, her body was aching, and she was sure she smelled like death and destruction. All she wanted was to go home to her apartment take a shower, eat some food and go to sleep...Maybe even cuddle with her girlfriend. Maybe.

"Of course it is someone." Aria retorted in a tone that was more or less defensive, picking up a new datapad to review. "That's how it always works, my little songbird. People don't appreciate things, they appreciate people. And when people are taken away from someone, they forget about the things that they thought they had. Things like loyalties, honor...the types of things that are intangible and abstract in conception. Once those don't matter anymore, I use it against them."

Without a word, Soraya turned her back on her mother and walked off. She wanted nothing more to do with her mother or the Cerberus operative.

Aria's voice rang out from behind her. "I wasn't finished with you, Soraya."

Pausing at the bottom step of the raised lounge, Soraya turned and looked back up to her mother. "Momma ... I'm exhausted. I'm hungry. I reek. Unless you need me to save the galaxy some more right now, I'm going home. We can finish talking about how dead I made Commander Shepard when I killed her and blew the station she was on to hell and back later." Her voice was more pleading than she wanted it to be, more than she meant it to be.

Her mother's eyes narrowed a bit, and Soraya saw a brief flash of motherly concern in her eyes. The asari's lips pursed for a moment as she thought to herself, then said "Unfortunately, my dear, I do need you to go save the galaxy again some more right now." A kind smile played across her lips.

Soraya's head dropped with the delivery of that statement, her chin almost on her chest. "What happened?" She asked in dejected resignation, her eyes shifting to Bray to see his reaction. He, too, had a look of defeat that seemed much more intense than the human equivalent of the expression. That extra set of eyes made every facial expression twice as intense as creature with only one set.

"There is a serious problem in the slums," Aria said, pulling up her omnitool on her wrist and forwarding files to Soraya and Bray. "Somehow a lab engineered virus was released down there and it's killing every race it comes into contact with, except for humans." Aria frowned as she said the last part of her statement, as if she didn't quite believe it. "I ordered the entire area, as well as a bit of a firebreak, into quarantine lockdown. I've posted armed guards in staggered outposts to ensure nothing gets in and nothing gets out. However…"

Soraya's eyes left her best friend's face and focused on her mother. She had sounded nearly broken hearted when she'd said 'However'. That was peculiar.

"However," Aria continued, clearly over her moment of emotion, "This plague has a 98% mortality rate on everything that isn't related to a monkey or a vorcha...but the vorcha isn't a surprise considering I've seen them bathe in sulfuric acid. I understand there's a salarian doctor trying to cure it, and I believe the crazy bastard can actually do it. He's not, however, in the position to distribute the cure once he synthesizes it. That's where you come in, sweetie,"

Soraya couldn't help the smile she got whenever her mother called her 'sweetie'. She always sounded british when she said the word, but that was probably due to the fact that word didn't actually exisit in the asari native tongue, or galactic common tongue. It was purely a human word of endearment, and it always won a few more points with Soraya when Aria used it.

"What does my dying ass have to get done, Momma?" Soraya asked, her belligerent attitude eaten away by her mother's change in disposition.

"I need you, and two others, to get to Mordin Solus's medical clinic. You will meet heavy resistance. The vorcha have lost their minds and have gotten into a turf war with the Blue Suns. They are killing anything that moves, and Nightingale will certainly draw their fire." Aria paused, beaming down at her daughter in pride, "They sure want you dead, daughter."

"Of course they do, Mother. I do my job very well," Soraya replied with a self assured smile. She saluted her mother with a quick raise of her hand, her index and middle finger extended to touch her outer eyebrow, then a sweeping gesture to her heart. A nod of consent was her dismissal, and she turned back around to continue her exit. Acheron rejoined her side the moment her boots touched the main floor of the club, a small grunt his greeting to her.

When they'd neared the middle bar, Bray finally said something. "Aria knows you're hiding something. I know you're hiding something. And you know that Gaia will know you are hiding something." His rich voice dancing between teasing and accusatory. Soraya knew that he wanted to know her secret, but also knew beyond shadows and doubts that Bray would never pry.

"I'm aware, and I also know I don't care who gets to know what. There's a time and a place, and right here and right now is neither of those things…" She replied, trailing off at the end.

"You'll always be a sister to me, and as your older brother, I'm always going to worry about you. But if you don't stop keeping secrets, I'm going to kick your ass, little girl," he said as they walked out of Afterlife's main doors, headed to Soraya's apartment to get Gaia for the mission.


End file.
